Marcus Fabius Quintilian “De institutione oratoria”

Johann Matthias Gesner was one of the most important classical philologists of the Bach period and rector of the Thomas School from 1730 to 1734. In his edition of Quintilian's "Institutione Oratoriae", published in 1738, he pays tribute to Bach in an extensive footnote as one of the most outstanding musicians of all time, who "surpasses Orpheus several times and Arion twenty times".